HinkleCreekElementarySchool595SouthHarbourDr.Noblesville,Indiana

SchoolImprovementPlan2016-2017

*Recognized by the Indiana Department of Education as a Four Star School

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Table of Contents

Section I: School Profile Page 1 Section II: Summary of Data Page 4

Hinkle Creek 2016 ISTEP and NWEA Data Page 8 Section III: Conclusions: Programming and Learning Environment Page 11Section IV: School Improvement Page 14 Section V: Hinkle Creek School Improvement Action Plan Page 15Hinkle Creek Data Analysis Conclusions Page 17-20

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Section I: School Profile

VisionHinkle Creek Elementary School teachers, staff, and students are:

Engaged in intellectual pursuits; Inspired to challenge the present; and Empowered to adapt, innovate, and succeed today and tomorrow.Mission Inspired by our students’ infinite potential, Noblesville Schools ensures student-centered learning that seamlessly integrates inquiry learning, 21st Century Skills, and technology in an interdisciplinary, authentic approach to learning. Description of School, Community, and Educational Programs Hinkle Creek Elementary School is a K-5 facility currently serving 960 students in a neighborhood setting. Occupied in 1980 as a new educational facility, Hinkle Creek has experienced numerous transitions over the past 30 years including three redistricting formats and boundary adjustments, socio-economic clientele changes, and grade level/program re-configurations. In addition to offering a challenging curriculum to all students at every level Hinkle Creek also provides numerous programs for its students with exceptional needs such as, FOCUS (High Ability) in grades 3-5, Advanced Mathematics in grade 2, Moderate Disabilities (Lifeskills), Functional Academic Program, Mild Disabilities, Learning Disabilities, Emotional Disabilities, and English Language Learners (ELL). A full compliment of therapy services are offered in conjunction with these same programs. Additionally, K – 5 students receive instruction in Art, Music, Physical Education, and Technology. Hinkle Creek is fortunate to maintain the services of a full-time nurse, a school counselor, school psychologist, and a school social worker. Remediation (Success Maker and Leveled Literacy Interventions) and enrichment (Academic Extracurricular Programs or AEP in grades K-5) programs are offered before and after school. Hinkle Creek also provides before and after school childcare (At Your School Child Services or AYS) for parents who wish to have their children involved in a program that is well connected to the daily expectations of the school. The Hinkle Creek Elementary School demographic profile is narrow when it comes to diversity. It is fair to note that the school does not qualify for any state or federally funded resources. All of the remediation services, with the exception of special education, are provided by in-house and highly qualified and professional staff that share responsibilities and believe no child should ever be left behind.

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The demographic figures below are based on the 2015-2016 school year.% Male Students = 54%% Female Students = 46%% White Students = 92 %% Hispanic = 3 %% Multiracial = 1 %% Black = 3 %% Asian = 0.7 %% American Indian = 0.3 % 97.8 % = Non-English Language Learners 2.2 % = English Language Learners80 % = Paid Meals20 % = Free/Reduced Meals17 % = Special Education83 % = General Education Description and Location of Curriculum: The Noblesville Schools curriculum is based on the Indiana Academic Standards 2014. Curricula and instruction are continually reviewed and revised according to student performance data, developments in educational research, and available resources including instructional materials and technology tools. Current curriculum development focuses on implementing changes in state standards, adjusting to new state achievement tests, and developing transfer goals and performance tasks. Indiana Academic Standards may be found at http://www.doe.in.gov/standards, and local curriculum maps are located at http://www.noblesvilleschools.org/Page/214. Description of Assessment Instruments in Addition to ISTEP+:

● IREAD-3 is a required, standardized state assessment used to measure foundational reading skills in the spring of the 3rd grade.

● Fountas and Pinnell Benchmarking System is a standardized assessment individually administered to students three times a year in grades K-5. Fluency, accuracy, and comprehension scores are used to measure instructional reading levels to inform small-group reading instruction.

● NWEA is an on-line computer assessment administered three times a year to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses in language arts and math in all K-5 grade levels.

● Running Records are informal assessment tools with anecdotal notes utilized daily to guide next steps in reading instruction.

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Section II: 2016 ISTEP Summary of Data

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ISTEP+ 2016 Math Results

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NWEA and ISTEP 2016 Correlation Graphs

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Section III: Conclusions about Current Programming and Learning Environment Supporting Indiana Academic StandardsDistrict curriculum maps are based on the Indiana Academic Standards.Within a Balanced Literacy Framework, including Reader’s Workshop, Language Word Study, and Writer’s Workshop, instruction is differentiated based on individual student needs. Engaging students in authentic reading practice throughout the day is a point of emphasis. A comprehensive reading program evaluation was conducted in 2012-13 and resulted in the adoption of the Journeys instructional series as a resource to supplement instruction in the balanced literacy framework.In school year 2012-13 K – 5 teachers implemented the Everyday Mathematics instructional series. Practice, remediation, and enrichment strategies support math instruction based on individual student need.

Analysis of Student Achievement Based on ISTEP+ and Other AssessmentsBased on formative and summative assessment data, Hinkle Creek’s 2016-17 goal is to improve student analysis of text and questions throughout all content areas. In order to close the achievement gap for our subpopulations, improvement efforts will focus on providing purpose-driven instruction, utilizing a gradual release of responsibility model, and providing students opportunities to apply learning in unique and authentic situations. We will continue to closely monitor individual student data, especially in our socio-economic and special education subgroups, in order to be as intentional as possible with core and intervention instruction.

In the 2016-17 school year, we will focus on closely monitoring the outcomes of our MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) efforts through reading level and math problem solving data. It is important that we close the achievement gap as early as possible. We will monitor how effectively we are doing so and adjusting practice to achieve desired outcomes early in students’ school years.

Parental Participation in the School Parents are a vital part of Hinkle Creek’s collaborative team. Hinkle Creek

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welcomes and encourages parents to become an active part of the learning environment. Volunteer opportunities are numerous and may include working in classrooms with small groups of students and/or individuals, in the media center, or on field trips, and serving on school and district-level committees. Parents are welcome to eat lunch with their child, participate in parent/teacher conferences and information nights, and attend celebration assemblies. The Hinkle Creek Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) also offers endless opportunities for involvement for all parents: fundraisers, movie night, the ice cream social, staff appreciation events, book fairs, clerical assistance from home or at school, and enrichment opportunities among others. The PTO and parent volunteers offer support and seek new opportunities for students, teachers, families, and community members throughout the year. Safe and Disciplined Learning Environment Hinkle Creek provides a safe and disciplined learning environment to all students. Families are provided with the Noblesville Schools Elementary Family Handbook that clearly defines district policies and expectations. Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, an evidence-based plan for improving behavior, encourages and rewards appropriate choices on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Expectations for students are clearly modeled, taught, and posted. Reteaching and modeling of desired behavior assists students in making positive choices.Hinkle Creek has a school crisis team, responsible for creating, publicizing, and regularly reviewing plans of action for various crises. Crisis drills are conducted regularly to practice school-wide procedures. Building access is limited to guests entering through the main doors throughout the school day, and all visitors are required to sign in at the office and wear a visitor badge while in the building. Cameras provide additional security coverage. Noblesville Schools has adopted a proactive plan for responding to threatening situations. ALICE-- Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate--is based on research on crises across the nation. It allows for informed decision-making to occur during a crisis situation, thus increasing the survival rates. All staff members receive ALICE training.

Technology as a Learning Tool Based upon the Noblesville Schools Technology Plan’s mission and philosophy statements, the integration of media and technology into the curriculum plays an important role in supporting student achievement in all content areas. Noblesville

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Schools is guided by national media and technology standards in providing educational opportunities for staff so that they successfully assist students with developing media literacy and technology skills in their daily lives. At Hinkle Creek, the School Librarian, Instructional Coach, Technology Paraprofessional, and all teachers in Early Childhood through 5th grade plan collaboratively to assure that students are taught inquiry, research, digital citizenship, and media literacy needed to be successful as they complete their education and become lifelong learners. Emphasis is on the American Association of School Libraries Standards for the 21st Century Learner, as well as the International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Learning. A building-level Technology Lead Teacher and the district Curriculum Integration Coordinator support teachers in implementing technology tools in daily instruction to enhance learning for students. Media Technology Aides assist students and staff in utilizing the multiple forms of technology available. Professional Development

The Hinkle Creek staff has organized internal professional development opportunities. In addition to district-provided early release time, staff members are involved in continuous professional development through shared study of professional literature, common planning times, staff learning meetings, and the contributions of Lead Teachers in math, technology, Inquiry, Project Lead The Way, and high ability instruction. Student achievement data analysis, school improvement plans, and collaboratively developed implementation rubrics provide a basis for professional development initiatives. Teachers are also encouraged to seek independent professional development opportunities to further professional growth.

The staff of Hinkle Creek Elementary School began by formally studying lesson objectives. Teachers studied and discussed research-based chapters and articles, analyzed examples and created lesson objectives based on our understandings. The staff created a model for creating and communicating lesson objectives.

Literacy professional development focused on implementing a reader’s and writer’s workshop and increasing the rigor and authenticity in reading lessons through close reading. Throughout each of these professional development opportunities, purposeful objectives and the gradual release of responsibility model have been emphasized.

A future professional development focus will be on authentic student engagement and real world application of learning. Professional learning

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opportunities will include coaching cycles and reflection in reader’s and writer’s Workshop implementation, collaborative planning focused on backward design, and teaching for real world transfer, using data to differentiate instruction for individual learners, and increasing student engagement.Alongside professional development in these instructional strategies, every employee in the school district has undergone diversity training to improve their cultural competency. In addition, school staff members have reviewed performance data of students in groups including gender, special education, low socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and English learners. Awareness of the achievement patterns of cultural subgroups, as well as of appropriate instructional materials and strategies to address weaknesses exhibited by members of these groups, will continue as a point of emphasis in future professional development involving data analysis, research, and pedagogy. Section IV: School ImprovementSpecific Areas Where Improvement is Needed ImmediatelyIn 2014-15, all Hinkle Creek teachers participated in an inquiry process with our data. First, all Hinkle Creek teachers participated in the review and analysis of student achievement data. Next, problem statements were identified and prioritized. Staff members then reflected upon these problem statements in order to develop inquiry questions to provide direction for school improvement. Finally, staff collaborated in cross-grade level teams to develop hypotheses to best address the greatest areas of need. The problem statement, inquiry questions, and hypotheses are listed below: Problem Statement Lack of modeling, independent practice, and purposeful feedback are causing students to have difficulty analyzing texts and questions in all subject areas.

Inquiry Questions:

How do we better educate our parents to help our students question and monitor at home?

What are the best practices for increasing our vocabulary understanding (Etymology)?

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How can we deepen our questioning in the classroom?

How do teachers assess our students’ ability to self-monitor?

How can we best build schema at school?

How do we help students understand the value or importance of being a life-long learner?

Hypothesis:

If we strengthen our instruction and modeling of text analysis and build vocabulary decoding strategies, students will have the ability to accurately match responses to questions and prompts.

Statutes and Rules to be Waived: No waiver of statutes or rules is requested.

TimelineforImplementation,ReviewandRevision:Theschoolimprovementplanwillbeimplementedatthebeginningoftheschoolyear,reviewwillbeongoing,andrevisionwilloccurbyJune30,2017.Section V: Hinkle Creek School Improvement Action Plan

HinkleCreekElementarySchoolImprovementActionPlan

Goal Allstudentswillimprovetheiranalysisoftextandquestionsthroughoutallcontentareas.

Benchmarks ByJune30,2017,90%ofallstudentswillscore4orhigherontheISTEP+writingapplication.ByJune30,2017,40%ofallstudentswillperformatthePass+levelontheEnglish/LanguageArts,and50%ofallstudentsontheMathportionsoftheISTEP+.

SupportingData F&PBenchmarking,ISTEP,IRead,NWEA

TargetedSubgroups

CulturalsubgroupsatHinkleCreekhavebeenidentifiedasSpecialEducation,HighAbilityLearners,andLanguageMinorityLearners.

InstructionalStrategies(Teacherswill...) LearningOutcomes(Studentswill...)

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Modelhowtoidentifywhataquestionisasking.

Discussandrespondtotextandquestionsacrossallcontentarea.

Modelhowtocriticallyreadatext. Studentscanindependentlyreadatextcritically.

Utilizeclosereadingstrategiestohelpstudentsunderstandthequestionortext.

Evaluatetextevidencetoprovethinking.

Givetimeforstudentstopracticebreakingapartquestions.(gradualrelease).

Selfanalyzebyusingarubrictoimprovewrittenresponses.

Providepurposefulandtimelyfeedbacktostudents.

Practiceclosereadingstrategiestounderstandquestionsandtext.

Utilizeanecdotalnotesinguidingnextstepsforwholegroup,smallgroup,and/orindividualinstruction.

Conferwithteacherandpracticeusingsuggestedstrategies.

Developresponsiveminilessons. Refertoanchorcharts,notes,andrubricsduringindependentpractice.

Buildstudentskillsinacademicandcontentareavocabulary.

Selfmonitorforunderstandingtoensurecomprehensionandaccuracyofresponses.

Teachminilessonsforanunderstandingofauthor’scraft.

Demonstratetheirunderstandingofauthor’scraftthroughtheirownwriting.

ResearchSupportingInstructionalStrategies

Fountas,I&Pinnell,G.,(2011).TheContinuumofLiteracyGradesPreK-8:AGuidetoTeaching.Portsmouth,NH:Heinemann.Calkins,L.(2013).UnitsofStudyinOpinion,Information,andNarrativeWriting.Portsmouth,NH:Heinemann.Miller,D.&Moss,B.,(2013).NoMoreIndependentReadingWithoutSupport.Portsmouth,NH:Heinemann.Carpenter,T.P.(2014).Children’sMathematics:CognitivelyGuidedInstruction.Portsmouth,NH:Heinemann.Serravallo,J.(2014).TheLiteracyTeacher’sPlaybook.Portsmouth,NH:Heinemann

ProfessionalDevelopmentAction Timeline

Strategiestoidentifyandexplainthecomponentsofaneffectiveresponse(TAG)Turnthequestionintoanopeningstatement.Answerthequestion.Givedetails,examples,andevidencefromtext.(RACE)Restatethequestion.Answerthequestionthatisbeingasked.CiteevidencefromthetextExplainhowtheevidenceinthetextsupportsyouranswer.

2016-2017schoolyear

Creationandimplementationofrubrics 2016-2017schoolyearQuarterlyTAG/RACEresponseassessment 2016-2017schoolyear

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ProfessionalDevelopmenttoImproveCulturalCompetencyofTeachers,Administrators,Staff,Parents,Students

Action TimelineMTSSwillbeutilizedtomakemodificationsfortheneedsoftargetedsubgroups.

MonthlyMTSSmeetings

“SeedSessions”PDGrowthOpportunities MonthlySessionsGradeLevelInquiry MonthlySessionsMonitoringSystem

Action ReviewandRevisionF&PBenchmark(BOY,MOY,EOY) CollaborationDayanalysis,PLCdiscussionsQuarterlyTAG/RACEAssessment CollaborationDayanalysis,PLCdiscussionsNWEAAssessments(BOY,MOY,EOY) QuarterlyMonitoringAssessments:Standardizedand/orlocallydevelopedmeasuresofprogresstowardthegoal ISTEPNWEAF&PBenchmarks(BOY,MOY,EOY)

Hinkle Creek Data Analysis Conclusions

2016 Hinkle Creek ISTEP Data Analysis

● 5th grade ELA Pass + increased 9% from 2015 to 2016

● HC has a significant number of Language Arts students who achieved an average of 80% or above on NWEA, but only scored PASS, not Pass+ on ISTEP

○ 3rd Grade : 18 total students ○ 4th Grade : 22 total students ○ 5th Grade LA: 8 total students

Inquiry Question: How do we get our students to improve performance consistently on both NWEA and ISTEP assessments?

● Math data was analyzed and there was no significance detected.

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Inquiry Questions:(3rd grade Math Results): How does a higher level DOK question affect a lower student vs a higher level student?How do we differentiate the DOK questions and learning activities between our Pass +, Avg., and Low Avg. (DNP) ? (3rd grade Math; 24 DNP, 45 Pass, 31 Pass +)

● Data is compared to the 2014 3rd grade results that had 7 DNP; 40 pass, and 53 Pass + **Without using the fact that this group of students contained over 60 math HA qualifiers in 3rd grade that school year.

(5th Grade Math Results):3rd to 4th grade Math results saw the percentage of Pass + students increase from 35% to 51%. (An increase of 16%) (2015 to 2016)(Special Education Results):4th to 5th grade Math results saw the percentage Passing students increase from 50% to 76% (An increase of 26%) (2015-2016)*This was the first year of special education co-teaching in 5th Grade.Inquiry Questions:What are the best practices to differentiate Math instruction?After Winter NWEA, what are we going to do instructionally differently for our NWEA 80-95 % group?

● In our Data Day, between Xmas and ISTEP testing time, what could we do differently instructionally to better grow our students higher level thinking?

How can we use our PD on DOK to improve these students from Pass to Pass +?Instructional Implications or Conclusions:There is a need to confer both individually and confer with skill level groups in 3-5 classrooms (Differentiation).The “teacher pleasers” don’t always have the strong deeper thinking skills.These students may not even be questioning their thinking if they are not with the teacher. Inquiry Question:

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Are they challenging any of their thinking during independent reading besides when he/she is with the teacher? Needs: There needs to be an accountability piece where they check in with a teacher or group.Future Data Analysis: Identify the 3rd grade students who were 80-95 % NWEA, and see how these students progress in ISTEP this year? Pass + ? 2016 LA 3rd grade: 14 DNP, 58 Pass, to 28 Pass +Data Analysis Assumptions/Inferences/Inquiry Questions:Do we have problems with writing about reading?Are we doing enough with TAG ? (What can be done to enrich or promote higher thinking after TAG ?)TAG may help the practical thinker in Math, more than in LA. (Math is more concrete.)Is the applied skills a problem? (NWEA is online)Do our teachers understand how to use the Learning Progressions in LC ? Do our teachers know where to find the Learning Progressions? (LC is teacher and student friendly) (Nville Rubric is for teacher use only.) (Not kid friendly!)A need for: Deeper thinking with Deeper Writing.Math and LA data look similar.3rd Grade Math: Academic language creates problems (EDM vs ISTEP language)A need to emphasize math vocabulary more in the future.3-5 Teachers need to create a list of math vocabulary terms that will “confuse” students.Special Education:

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LA: Special Education drops in % of students passing from 2014-2016: 82 to 68 to 48 Current 5th graders: Dropped from 75 to 60 (from 4th to 5th grade)Math: 56 to 76 (4th to 5th grade)76 % passing rate in 5th grade that is almost back to where we were before the test changed (2014)Inquiry Question or Inferences: Is MobyMax making a significant difference in regard to Math?Cohort Group Gender Graph:LA : % has decreased from year to year since 2014Math: % 5th Grade Girls out performed the Boys; (Different than the state and HC LA results)Cohort Group of Free and Reduced vs Paid:LA: FR 87% passing vs 81% Paid (year before the same)Math: FR 100% passing vs 88% Paid (year before 75% F/R vs 84% Paid)Inquiry Question:Why did our Free / Reduced students out perform the Paid Lunch students in both Math and LA ISTEP assessments in 2016?